Without Her Letter
by Colubrina
Summary: A decision is made to protect Muggle-borns from the continual war by not inviting them to Hogwarts. This was, perhaps, not a wise choice. Hermione Granger was certainly not amused. Dramione. AU. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**then**

"So we are agreed," Albus Dumbledore said. "We will stop sending Muggle-borns invitations to Hogwarts."

The war had continued to smolder and so that decision was made. It was just painting a target on their backs, people said, some in sorrow and some in concealed delight. It wasn't fair to them. It was better, after all, to live in ignorance of your magical birthright than to die because of it. Concerns about accidental magic and the dangers of untrained magicians were waved aside. How many children continued to show signs of accidental magic once they passed out of the uncontrolled emotional intensity of childhood? And had anyone – other, of course, than he-who-must-not-be-named – ever had the determination and cleverness to set himself a course of study and learn to control the mysterious powers for which they had no explanation without even a wand?

No one, everyone agreed, had ever managed that. There was no danger to the wizarding world in leaving these children untrained and, as they reiterated to one another, reassuring themselves this was the right decision, better ignorance than death.

And so Hermione Granger received no letter inviting her to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

* * *

 **now**

Narcissa Malfoy raised her brows in calculated disdain as the almost-man fell to her floor. She glanced at the spreading pool of blood soaking into the ancient hardwood and murmured a soft complaint that the elves would have to clean that now. She ignored the dying words about blood purity and other such rot, words intended to rouse the black-robed figures who stood in silence and watched him die.

Words that failed.

Blood was just blood.

Power was everything. Power and the willingness to seize it.

* * *

 **then**

She was a strange child. An _unlucky_ child _._

People fell down the stairs near Hermione. One day a window had shattered in her classroom, which was peculiar enough, but to have every other window in the room break at even five minute intervals until they all needed replacement was just too strange to be accounted for. A boy who had turned down her invitation to a dance was subsequently attacked by crows.

It was all quite inexplicable. Not her fault. Just… bad luck. Weird, bad luck.

* * *

 **now**

"Shall we go to Hogwarts?"

Draco Malfoy held a hand out to his bride. She didn't spare a glance to the body she'd left cooling on the floor. She sounded eager – hungry even – for the next battle and he let the tiniest of smiles play around his mouth.

"Your wish," he murmured.

* * *

 **then**

Draco Malfoy, Marked Death Eater, recent Hogwarts graduate, and member of an elite so rarified it was amazing he could breath in the elevated regions of society where he lived, was having an utter shite day. His parents had brought up the desirability of a connection to the Greengrass family again, had, in fact, invited the younger girl to tea and neglected to inform him of that wee fact. He'd seen her, spotty and graceless, in the front hall and escaped out the back before anyone could trap him into obligations and courtesies he had no interest in offering. Now he was stalking about Muggle London where no interfering parents, over-eager flunkies, or syncophants could find him. This ridiculous girl was maybe all of fifteen, barely not a baby. The thought of kissing her was repugnant enough; the idea of wedding and bedding her made him want to retch.

He kicked at some clumps of dirt at the entrance to some pathetic excuse of a playground and then narrowed his eyes when the clumps rose up into a miniature whirlwind. He looked up, searching for who had found him, but the only person there was a brown-skinned girl with the most ridiculous set of curls he'd ever seen. She stood on a swing, dressed in what he assumed passed for clothing in the Muggle world, and had her head leaned up against the chain as she regarded the spiral of dust dancing in the late afternoon sunlight.

"You'll get in trouble if anyone sees you do that," he said.

She looked up at him, mostly indifferent to his presence but too polite to wholly ignore him. "Why?" she asked.

He rolled his eyes. "Statute of Secrecy, obviously," he said.

She shrugged and went back to watching her dust. Draco looked for her wand and didn't see one. Peculiar. "How are you hiding your wand?" he asked her.

"My what?" She looked at him again.

"Wand," he said. He pulled his out and waved it around as a visual aide for the obvious.

"I'm not five," she said. "I don't play with pretend toys anymore." She smirked a little. "No offense."

Draco put his wand back in its holster. "Right," he said. "So we're just playing pretend. Okay. I guess that's as good an excuse as any if someone sees you." He studied her. "I don't know you. Where did you go to school? Beauxbatons?"

"Is that some kind of fancy public school?" she asked with a laugh. "No." She jumped down and stepped over to him, letting her dirt cyclone fall. She stuck her hand out. "Hermione."

"Malfoy," he said and waited for the light of recognition in her eyes. It didn't appear. "Draco Malfoy."

"Like the constellation?" she asked.

Draco nodded but was caught up in the seemingly impossible moment of a witch not knowing who he was. "Who are you," he asked as he catalogued her Muggle clothing, her apparent lack of a wand, and that she didn't know who he was. It added up to something unbelievable and yet rather marvelous. "You aren't possible," he said.

"Are you touched?" she asked.

"You're a witch," he said.

"Yep, definitely touched," she said. "Or rude."

Draco shook his head and, lest she run off before he could figure her out, pulled his wand out again, using it to spin dirt the way she had. "I can do it too," he said. She looked from the dirt to him and back again and slowly backed away until the swing hit the back of her legs. She sat down on it, her eyes never leaving the whirlwind.

"Do something else," she ordered in a whisper. "I thought I was the only one. Do something else."

It was dark by the time she let him go, eliciting promises he'd return. He'd shown her charms and transfiguration and even risked a Dark curse or two. She didn't react to the still illegal spells any differently than she had to the sight of a floating leaf. He'd teased her until she'd shown him some of the wandless, voiceless magic she'd taught herself. She didn't know there were wands. She didn't know there were spells. All she knew was that she was different, she could do things.

She could do a lot of things.

"You can't tell Muggles," he ordered her. "No one who can't do magic can know about us."

She bristled a little at his tone but then sagged and said, "I know."

"What happened," he asked. They'd moved to a small copse of stunted trees at the edge of the playground and leaned up against one, their shoulders touching. Something, after all, had clearly happened.

"Drugged me," she said. "I was psychotic, you see. Delusional. I thought my toys could fly. I saw things no one else did." She smiled a bit bitterly. "Touched."

Draco felt a surge of rage that filthy, despicable Muggles had seen fit to try to do anything to this girl. She was a witch. She might not be a _Malfoy_ (and good thing, too, a tiny voice in his head whispered, because that would be even more vile than marrying that little girl he'd abandoned with his mother) but she was still a witch.

"I'll come back," he promised.

"Tomorrow," she nearly ordered.

"Tomorrow," he agreed.

* * *

 **interlude**

You go home, the pale boy with his absurd wand burning in your mind. You turn on your computer and then frown and push the keyboard away impatiently.

Whatever else you know or don't know, you would bet money that Draco Malfoy wouldn't show up on any search of any database to which you have access. He's part of some parallel world, one where what you can do is normal, one that doesn't exist to you and your computer.

Statute of Secrecy, he'd said.

There were laws, laws designed to keep non-magical people – _Muggles_ – from finding out about them, about these magic users with their wands and their statutes. With their _schools_.

He asked what school you went to, meaning, you realize, that there are schools. More than one since he knew you hadn't gone to his. Meaning there are enough people – enough _witches –_ to fill the halls of multiple schools.

You feel a slow rage building that this world was there, that you could have been normal. That you could have been something other than the outcast girl even the teachers didn't like despite your raised hand and brilliant mind. You aren't a freak, you think. No, you aren't a freak,you just aren't some worthless, filthy _Muggle_.

You're better than all these people who told you were seeing things, that things weren't happening. Better than the doctors who drugged you. Better than the teachers who dismissed you. Better than the children who wanted nothing to do with you because you were too different, too strange.

You think that if this Draco Malfoy doesn't return tomorrow you'll burn your own world down to find him and what he knows, what is _ordinary_ to him.

* * *

 **now**

They'd arranged themselves for battle in the Great Hall, gratifyingly astonished their foes had walked through the wards. The young Mrs. Malfoy had dropped them without even a theatrical wave of her hand and the followers she'd bought with a monster's blood followed her.

Power was everything.

"I should thank you," she said, her voice carrying. "Your destruction of the horcruxes was convenient. It almost makes up for the way you excluded me and mine. It almost makes up for growing up an outcast."

She looked at the ashen faces. "I am your chicken," she said, "and I've come home to roost."

* * *

 **then**

Draco's mother was waiting for him when he returned. She'd arranged herself on a chaise in the library, a book in one hand and a glass of wine to hand. Narcissa Malfoy could command any room; her blonde prettiness and deceptive fragility had captivated Lucius Malfoy years ago and while Draco knew people whispered the marriage had been more in the way of a dynastic merger than a love match he also knew his parents adored one another. Narcissa lifted her wine glass to her lips with one dainty hand and regarded him long enough to make most people uncomfortable before she spoke.

"I made your apologies to little Miss Astoria," she said. "I assume you were called away on – "

"I'm not marrying that chit," Draco interrupted her. "She probably still sleeps with a stuffed animal for Salazar's sake."

"Naturally there would be a long – "

"No."

Mother and son smiled at one another with equally bland expressions until Narcissa waved her hand in the air. "You are young yet," she said as though she were expressing disapproval of the match with Astoria Greengrass rather than making a concession. "I'm sure the right girl will present herself in time."

"Mmm." Draco sat down on a stool that had been conveniently placed near his mother. "I met one today."

"Really?" Narcissa took a sip of her wine. "One you didn't know?"

"More interestingly," he said, "she didn't know me." He steepled his fingers and pressed them to his lips as he looked at his mother.

"You resemble your father more with each day."

"Would you mind explaining how a witch could not know what a wand is?" Draco asked the question idly but his eyes never wavered from his mother's face. "I suspect this is one of those gaps in my Hogwarts education."

"Their curriculum is shockingly lacking in some areas," Narcissa said. She took another sip of her wine before she said, "Especially history. It's obvious. She's Muggle-born."

"I beg your pardon?"

Narcissa cocked her head to the side and began to smile. "Oh yes, Muggles give birth to witches all the time. When I was a girl these children were educated alongside even pure bloods, much to my family's dismay."

"Muggles are filth," Draco said, repeating the propaganda he'd heard his whole life without thought. "This girl was… she was brilliant, mum."

"We used to call them mudbloods," Narcissa said musingly. "The term has fallen out of fashion. It's too rude for adults to use and, well, with none of them at Hogwarts, sullying the halls with their Muggle ideas and Muggle parents, none of you had cause to use it." She glanced out the window into the dark night. "If my mother knew you had skipped out on a tea with a perfectly nice girl – "

"No."

" – to dally with some bit of filth she'd tell me to take your wand and make you – "

"She could do wandless magic."

Narcissa stopped talking at that and glanced back at her son. "Not possible."

"Except I saw her do it. She did something as near to an Imperius as you could hope to see on a bird, made then thing sit on her finger and sing on command, all without a wand or any knowledge of spells."

"This war does drag on," Narcissa said. She leaned her head back against the arm of her chaise and closed her eyes, wearied beyond endurance, it would seem, by the war and her son's choice of afternoon companions. "So many think it's about such silly things. Pureblood supremacy. Traditionalism." She sighed. "Sometimes I think that old fool, Dumbledore might actually believe he's fighting for freedom and whathaveyou."

"Dumbledore," Draco said, "is an idiot."

"No, dear," Narcissa said, without opening her eyes. "He's a brilliant man seeking absolution." She sighed "We really must work on correcting the gaps in your knowledge of history."

"I beg your pardon?" Draco was far too used to his mother to do more than prompt her.

"I wonder," she said, "if that's why he keeps Binns on. Much safer to bore all the children with stories of goblin war packs of a thousand years ago than explore how we ended up fighting about Muggles, of all things." She opened one pale eye and watched Draco as she added, "Though, of course, it's really about power." She closed that eye again. "Tell your little friend it was Dumbledore's decision to keep her, and people like her, out of Hogwarts."

"And if she asks why?" Draco inquired.

"To protect her from the likes of you, of course."

"I would never hurt her," Draco objected and Narcissa's lips twitched in a smile.

"If she'd been just one of many filthy vermin?" she asked softly. He stiffened but didn't respond. "A powerful, beautiful – I assume – girl kept from her heritage is a powerful tool," Narcissa said. She stood and stretched and Draco rose as well. "She is presentable, I hope?"

Draco shrugged. "In those slovenly Muggle clothes how could one tell?" he said. When his mother waited expectantly he added, "but properly dressed she'd be… you would not be ashamed of her." His eyes almost glittered as he thought about the girl in the park. "Her hair's a bit like Auntie Bella's" he said. "More of a brown to her black, but quite dramatic."

Narcissa nodded and then tipped her head toward the library door and, obediently, he escorted her out of the room and down the hall toward the stairs that led up to her room where she would surely relate this conversation to Lucius. "Teach your little friend, Draco," she said. "Get her a wand and see just how powerful she is." She paused and, patting him on the cheek, added, "Treat her like the most untouchable of purebloods," she instructed. "Like Miss Greengrass." She made a face as she considered his abdication of his social chore just that day. "Or quite a bit better. Make her trust you above all others."

If Draco had any questions about her intensity he didn't let them show. He just bowed over his mother's hand. "When you order me to do what I planned anyway, how could I resist or deny you?"

"See that you don't," was all she said as she left him at the foot of the stairs.

* * *

 **now**

"All I want is the decision-makers," she said. "I'm not here to wage a war on children." Across the hall her eyes met those of the venerable members of the Order of the Phoenix. "We'll be doing it my way from now on," she said.

. . . . . . . . . .

 _ **A/N - part 1 of 3**_


	2. Chapter 2

**then**

Draco handed the girl a set of decent robes he'd had his mother find in one of the many closets of Malfoy Manor. The spring green fabric hung loosely from the shoulders, rendering detailed fit questions moot, and the bands of silver metallic embroidery gave a less than subtle nod to his House. She had no idea what the colours in the dress he was holding out for her meant, of course, but no one in Diagon Alley would mistake the meaning of a pretty witch in Slytherin green on his arm.

Claim staked.

Unfortunately, the witch in question seemed downright annoyed he was handing her things to wear; she certainly didn't miss the implied criticism of her Muggle clothing. Tight blue trousers, however, and a shirt that looked like something you'd wear if you were in bed ill and in the care of a Healer did not appeal. She looked trampy and ridiculous at the same time but a lifetime of manipulating people made Draco simply shrug and say, "Fashion is different for witches, but if you want to stand out as odd I won't stop you."

She huffed at that but stalked off to change behind the dubious privacy of a shrubbery. Draco turned his back like the gentleman he was, at least in breeding, and resisted the urge to peek. When she flounced back into view, her previous attire shoved into the far reaches of her bag, he smiled. He almost licked his lips. In proper robes she was more than acceptable. In proper robes she incited most improper thoughts. He squelched them and fished the gift he'd brought for her out of his pocket.

"Here," he said, and tucked the silver and emerald snake clip into her hair. "This matches the robes and will help keep some of those curls out of your eyes." She reached a hand up to touch the ornament he hadn't let her see and he gave her his blandest Malfoy smile. Let her figure out when she took it off at home that it wasn't just a trivial bauble.

She seemed suspicious of his expression but just squinted at him and said, "Do I pass inspection now?"

He looked at her with frank appreciation. "You'll turn every head," he said.

"I thought the idea of this dress was to blend in in a way jeans and a t-shirt wouldn't," she muttered and he laughed and offered her his arm.

"You don't want to look like a Muggle," he said. "Blending in however, is not going to be possible."

He hesitated for a moment when they reached the entrance to Diagon Alley. "Try to look at ease," he said quietly. "Things may seem very strange but I'd appreciate it if you didn't gawp. Bringing you in here… it probably breaks a dozen laws, if not more, but you need a wand and this is where to get one."

A closed and indifferent expression settled across her face and he almost whistled in admiration. "Do you plan to stand here all day?" she said, her voice cool, and he opened the way and gestured for her to proceed him. She glanced around once they were inside but didn't betray anything other than a faint near-disdain.

"Well," he murmured as he led her toward Ollivander's to get her her wand. "You aren't one to wear your heart on your sleeve."

"I'm supposed to be impressed?" she asked.

He held the door for her. "Most in your shoes would be," he said. He glanced at her eyes and was not surprised to see a look of fury flash across her face before it was subsumed under her mask.

He explained to Ollivander, lying with every word, that his dear friend needed a new wand. The man raised a brow at the terminology and let his eyes linger on the snake glittering in her hair but all he said was, "Of course." Gainsaying the wishes of suspected Death Eaters – or Aurors, for that matter – was bad for business. One kept the endless war away from one's doorstep by pretending to know nothing, suspect nothing. His little Muggle-born whisked easily a dozen wands before the man found the perfect match for her: dragon-heartstring and a pretty cherry wood. Hermione ran her fingers along the length of the unadorned stick and almost purred. Draco thanked the wand maker and paid double what the man asked before escorting his witch back down the street and out, toward the mundane world that had spawned her. He had been right, she'd garnered attention. He flashed a proprietary, toothy smile at one of the endlessly interchangeable Weasley brats as the man had stared with speculative interest at the unknown woman. The man glared back and Draco leaned in to whisper something in Hermione's ear.

"You've attracted a would-be beau," he said. "Shall I introduce you?" He tipped his head toward the ginger man and Hermione followed the motion.

"And what would he say if he knew I were a Muggle?" she asked.

"You aren't a Muggle," Draco said with disgust. "You might have been born there, but you're a witch." He tightened his grip on he arm and she looked up at him from under her lashes.

"Still," she said.

"He'd probably report us both to the nearest Auror," Draco said as if he were admitting an unpleasant truth. "My mother has informed me that a decision was made when we were both young children to keep all Muggle-borns out of this world. As I said, we're breaking who knows how many laws."

"A decision was made," Hermione said, turning her back on the Weasley. "How carefully passive that structure is." Her mouth tightened in a hard line. "Who made this decision?"

"Not me," Draco said. She waited at the exit and, as if she were pulling the words from him he said, "A man named Dumbledore. The head of the school I went to. Others supported him, agreed with him, but the idea was his." He looked into her eyes as if willing her to understand. "It was supposed to protect you."

They stepped back out of his world and into hers.

"Protect me from what?" she asked.

"Probably me," he said. She made a scoffing sound and he rubbed a hand over his face. " I mean it. There's a… there's conflict," he said. He began walking away, back to their park, and she hurried to keep up with him. "Historically people like you – people from the Muggle world – were, they weren't, it wasn't fair, you have to understand, I've never even known anyone like you. When I met you I thought you were impossible. I didn't know witches could… it's just… it wasn't fair," he ended his carefully incoherent sputtering as she walked alongside him.

"People like me," she said slowly, "we were… our social status was not high?"

Draco nodded as if miserable. "I've never even known," he said again. "It's just… it wasn't right, keeping witches out. It's not right not letting people know, letting them think they're just… touched, like you said. But there's… it's a war," he said, letting his head droop. "And my side, we, not me you understand, but people, they, people like you, they hurt them."

He said the last in a near whisper and she stopped walking. "They kept you away to protect you from people like me," he said again. "So we wouldn't hurt you."

She ran her hands along the wand tucked at her waist, the wand she didn't know how to use yet. "What would that man, the one staring at me, have done?' she asked. "If he knew I was Muggle-born?"

"Reported us both to Aurors," Draco said again. "They… they work for the government, you understand. They enforce the law as it stands now."

"How could they have… what could they have done. You've already told me this world exists," she said. "Isn't it too late now?"

"They could erase your memory," Draco said. "You could wake up at home and not remember me, or this, or anything."

"And that's not hurting me?" she asked. He could see the horror in her eyes and hid his satisfaction. The really beautiful thing was he hadn't even lied. Every word he'd told her was absolutely true. As far as he knew, he'd have gotten a nasty fine for breaking the Statute of Secrecy and, like any other Muggle, she'd have been obliviated. "Promise me you will never do that to me," she said. "Promise me."

Draco took her hand in his. "I will never lie to you," he vowed. "I will never erase your memory, even if you hate me for things you learn."

"And you'll teach me," Hermione said.

"Everything I know," he promised. Then he added with a cheeky grin, "Though I'm probably a shite teacher."

She stared at their joined hands. "I think you'll find I'm an excellent student," she said.

"I'm counting on it." Draco eyed her in her robes with his present in her hair and couldn't resist adding. "Tomorrow you'll have to tell me what you think of that clip."

* * *

 **interlude**

You pull the clip out of your hair as soon as you're back in the safety of your room at the home where you still live and stare in wonder at the little silver snake with its emerald eyes. You know this means something. You know Draco Malfoy picked his symbol carefully. You know he wants something.

You debate simply asking him but reject the idea as too obvious.

There's a conflict. There's a _war_. Your status would not have been high. He can't admit what you are but he's dropped a bit of expensive jewelry in your hair and walked you down the street. He's shown you off.

That, you think, is new. No one's ever regarded you as something valuable before.

You bring the clip to your nose as if you could smell him, somehow, on the metal.

Your status would not have been high. His, clearly, is.

Yours, you decide, will be higher.

And you will learn more about this Dumbledore.

* * *

 **now**

They tried to argue with her. They tried to explain it wasn't them. They had only wanted to protect her, protect people like her, from the monsters who had ranged themselves in their robes and their masks behind her. She let them speak, let them rage and fulminate and grandstand and then she yet again demanded they send forth the leaders of the Order. She demanded they send forth the ones who had decided that she was better off ignorant. She demanded they hand over Albus Dumbledore, leader of the light.

"They're the ones," the Order members cried again even as a man with a long beard stepped forward.

Draco Malfoy took her hand in his, the possessive intent absolutely clear. "I don't have any history of voting against Muggle-Borns," he said. He glanced at the woman at his side. "Indeed, I'd say I've rather emphatically voted for one."

"Your family," an enraged ginger-haired woman said, stepping in front of the elderly man, her wand at the ready. "Their very motto is purity always conquers. You're a bunch of dark wizards who revel, and have always reveled, in destroying Muggles and Muggle-borns."

Narcissa Malfoy tilted her head to the side and regarded the woman with smug delight. "Do try to keep up Molly," she said. "Hermione is the dearest daughter-in-law a woman could wish for. We may not have the peculiar fascination that your husband does with rubber duckies and other Muggle accoutrement, but we are hardly the prejudicial monsters of the previous generations. Hermione is, whatever her birth, a veritable princess."

Status is power. Power is the only thing.

* * *

 **then**

She wore the clip again.

Draco wasn't sure what to make of that gesture when he met Hermione in the park again. From a pureblood girl, raised with formal manners and rules and roles, he would have known – she would have meant him to know – that she welcomed his suit. Encouraged it, even. From this girl, well, she might just think it was pretty. She might just think it was rude not to wear his gift. Merlin, she might not even recognize the value of the thing. Draco realized with some shock that he couldn't read this girl at all.

It was uncomfortable to be quite so adrift in social interaction.

"I take it you liked it," he said, gesturing toward the little snake in her hair.

"It's cute," she said. "Thank you."

Never had a Slytherin witch, in all his knowledge of the type, given away less.

He'd brought her books. He handed over _Hogwarts: A History_ with a grunt. She took the huge book and hefted it. "Homework?" she asked him.

"It's probably the best history," he said. "I assumed you'd want to know – "

"Yes," she said.

She struggled to fit the book into her bag as he took out another one. This one he was less sure of and he passed it to her with a frown; he had to admit he was genuinely worried. _The Muggle-Born Problem_. She read the title and waited for his explanation. "I don't," he fumbled, "This isn't how I… but this is what, why… just read it, okay?"

She flipped through the pages of the thin volume, her eyes darting rapidly along the words, skimming the material, picking up the gist of the biased argument. Even Draco, raised with a prejudice against Muggles so absolute he never thought about why they were lesser, they simply were, had read the book the night before and cringed at its tone. He'd decided, though, that she needed to know what she'd be facing.

"Standard anti-immigrant rhetoric," she announced after a few minutes. "Not very original and there are grammatical and spelling mistakes."

Draco blinked a few times and then let a laugh escape. That was not the reaction he'd expected. "What?" he asked.

"They dress wrong, they talk funny, they won't leave their ways behind, they won't just wholesale adopt our way of doing things. They might be dirty, they might have diseases, and they can't be trusted." She handed the book back to him. "I could probably find a nearly identical book in a shop about every immigrant group in England."

Draco eyed her. "So you – "

She sat down on the swing and used her feet to push herself off, then began pumping her legs and she sailed higher and higher into the air. She stopped abruptly and looked at him. "I'm not going to defend Muggle culture to you," she said.

"They told you you were crazy," he said.

"From their perspective I was," she countered.

"But – "

"The problem isn't Muggles," she said. "The problem is your gatekeepers. Your Dumbedores. Your… whoever wrote that trash." She leaned forward on her swing. "How dare they keep me out? They knew I wasn't ill, that there wasn't anything wrong with me. _They_ condemned me to being outcast. _They_ condemned me to being alone." She hesitated. "And I'm still not welcome, am I?"

He shook his head.

"Teach me the magic," she said. "Teach me all of it. I'll show these people what it is to leave me to rot in a world they despise. I'll make them all sorry."

"Not me, I hope," Draco said.

"Just teach me," she said.

So he did. She'd said he'd find her a good student and that had been, he had to admit, a bit of an understatement. She worked through the first year spell book in a week. The second year took her two. She asked about divination and accepted his assessment that it was nonsense. "It's not that there aren't seers," he said. "It's just that either you are or you aren't and you can't teach it. Plus, prophecy never means what it seems to." She absorbed Arithmancy with ease, pronouncing it similar to Muggle maths. Transfiguration was harder but she came back to every meeting with more and more mastered. He suspected he went home and practiced with the wand she still seemed to regard as both utterly lovely and a bit of a cheat. He reminded her she couldn't let anyone see.

"I'm used to not being seen," she said.

Draco, who'd had every step cheered, every spell mastered praised, blanched at that.

"My parents were busy," she said, excusing them. "Are busy. They're mostly glad I'm not crazy, that they don't need to worry about me ending up living under a bridge somewhere talking to monsters no one else can see."

"I wouldn't recommend talking to bridge trolls," Draco said. "They're violent and stupid." He wasn't even looking at her when he said it, didn't think of it as anything other than dry advice. He was pulling out the book of Potions; he wasn't sure how they'd manage Potions and had been considering having to bring her back to the Manor to use the small lab there and fretting about all the implications of that, so the way she flung her arms around him and laughed with delight came as a surprise to him.

"There are trolls," she said. "I knew it."

"Of course there are," he said. He went to unwind her arms from his neck and then hesitated. As usual, she had his snake in her hair, she smelled of shampoo and bergamot flavored tea, and she was wearing the Muggle clothes he still just hated. "I forget," he said softly, "how many things I think of as normal are still wonders to you." He wasn't sure she'd welcome the touch but he hugged her and felt her pull herself closer to him; he realized he wasn't thinking about Potions or trolls but about girls, or one in particular. He rested his forehead against hers and inhaled and tried to master his thoughts.

He highly doubted she'd take kindly to the ideas pushing against his brain.

"I need to assimilate," she said. "I need to know everything. Not just the history, not just the spells. I need to mimic all the cultural expectations, all the unspoken rules, so no one will ever dismiss me as just a Muggle-born."

Draco was about to tell her he had no idea how to teach her to be a pureblood girl until he remembered his mother's casual inquiry about his little friend.

"I have an idea," he said.

. . . . . . . . . .

 ** _A/N - Part 2 of 3_**


	3. Chapter 3

**interlude**

Draco Malfoy begins taking you on regular trips to the little magical shopping area. Each time you get an ice cream and sit and observe the culture. You don't take notes but you watch, you catalog, you learn. You wear the dresses he provides – dresses he calls robes - and memorize the way people move, the way they interact, the very cadence of their speech. There's a distinct class system, you realize, one that's almost Victorian. Draco puts on a different set of manners once they enter his world; he opens doors and attends to your every need. He fetches. He carries. No one's ever kissed your fingertips quite this much and it would be funny if it didn't also reek of unspoken warnings to everyone who sees him. Every touch of your elbow is a claim of possession. Every opened door is a statement you belong to the class that demands courtesy.

You need to learn this.

You plan to rub that you're the one they left out in their arrogant, magical faces but you don't plan to make any mistakes. Anything – any one thing – you get wrong will mark you as a cultural outsider. These people – these wizards – probably aren't even self-aware enough to know why they'll find you dismissible if you call a Healer a Doctor or a dress robes, they just will.

Draco protects you from having to interact yet. He's talked about having his mother help you learn to blend in and you find that very interesting. Why, you wonder, would a member of the cultural elite want to help her son's little project? What's in it for her?

Draco takes care to hide the mark burned into his arm whenever you're in his world. You see how people treat him with deference, with a little fear, with a little resentment. You see how some girls try to catch his eye, how they look at you as an obstacle. You see how others turn their backs on him and make a point of not seeing him.

Conflict, indeed. Maybe, you think, it's time to get a little more clarity on that.

* * *

 **now**

"She's not a princess," a burly ginger-haired man says. "She's a Muggle-born, and teaching her magic was against every single law we have. The moment she discovered it existed she should have been Obliviated just like any other Muggle for her own protection."

"And ours," someone agreed.

"I discovered magic existed before I even started school," Hermione said looking at the crowd with a hint of fury behind her seemingly placid mask. "Draco didn't teach me about magic," she said, "he just taught me how all of you are mind-controlling scum dependent upon wands."

"Everyone needs wands," someone protested.

"Your bogeyman didn't," Hermione said. "He taught himself wandless magic in his orphanage before you deigned to offer him the gift of your fine instruction. I had many more years thinking I was a freak, many more years as an outcast." She smiled at them. "I'm therefore much better than he was."

"Is," said a dark-haired man with startling green eyes. "Only one person can kill him. The prophecy."

"Was," she repeated. "Divination's a bit tricky to interpret. Always with the loopholes." She smiled again. "Perhaps a little more reading of Sophocles and less worrying about wand waving was in order? I understand you were raised as the lamb for the slaughter but go forth, little man, and be free. You won't be ruling Thebes."

Draco smothered a laugh at how confused Harry Potter looked. The Greek classics hasn't been part of his education, that was clear.

* * *

 **then**

Draco nearly flinched when Hermione just began to roll up his sleeve. "Explain," she said, her fingers on his Dark Mark. He hadn't wanted to do this quite so soon. Death Eaters struck him as a difficult group to make her understand, especially given the blood purity rhetoric.

"There are two sides," he said at last.

"There usually are," she agreed.

"Triangles have three," he muttered and she laughed. "I'm on one side," he said at last. "That Mark is a symbol of my… allegiance, I guess? My rank within the movement?" He rubbed at his face and sat down at a bench in their little Muggle park. She sat next to him and tucked on foot up under her leg and waited. "We're the side that advocated blood purity."

She nodded. She'd done enough reading to know that that meant and to know what that meant for her. "Do you still?" she asked. "Do you?"

"The other side almost conceded that," he said. She took his hand and, heartened, he went on. "When they kept Muggle-borns away from school they… most of the adults fled to the continent. They had to register, you see, there was a commission, and we took their wands away so they couldn't do magic." He glanced over at her at that and the roll of her eyes made him smile, though just a little. He'd like to see someone try to take her magic away. "There's no one left, I don't think, not in all of Britain, so – "

"So now the excuse is?" she asked

"Dark magic," he said. "Traditionalism. Oppression."

"You're for oppression?"

"Oddly," he said, "given the treatment of the Muggle-born, no. We're for, well, limited government regulations. An it harm none do as ye will and such." He took a deep breath. "The other side says that magic should be controlled. That we need to keep it locked down to keep Muggles from finding out." He squeezed her hand and fell silent.

"What's Dark magic?" She looked away from him and did her bird summoning trick. A sparrow flew over and perched on her finger, chirping in confusion before it serenaded them. "Is this?"

"Yes," he said. "Imperius Curse, control of another creature. Instant sentence to Azkaban. Prison."

"Funny," she said, "since the whole thing is about who has control." She scooted closer and leaned her head on his shoulder and Draco let go of tension he hadn't realized he had. "That little obliviation trick seems worse than making a bird sing."

"You could make me sing," he pointed out. "You could make me stab someone."

"Your Death Eaters are going to hate me," she observed.

"You are proof that Muggle-borns can be – "

"Better than they are," she said. "I will be better than all of them." She closed her eyes. "And the side that kept me out of your little school, out of your world, will regret their misguided attempt to keep me safe. How insulting could they be?"

"You would have been – "

"Just teach me," she said. "My little elitist boyfriend. Teach me."

He froze at the words. She turned her face to him and looked down at the eyes she opened a crack so she could squint at him. "Or have I misread the snake?" she asked.

"It's a bit more than a boyfriend, if not quite a fiancee," he said at last. "Is that what you want?"

She reached a hand up and settled it behind his head, tugging his mouth down toward hers. Draco let his lips press against hers and felt the way her cool, self-confident body language faltered a little at the touch. This was new to her, he realized, and felt a fierce burn of satisfaction. Even most pureblood girls wouldn't have come to him this untouched. Purity, he thought, always conquers, and as he shifted on the bench to face her more easily, as he tucked his hands on either side of her face, he let himself by conquered.

When he finally broke away from her she said, a little breathless, "So what are we?"

"As much as you want," he said, pulling a thumb along the line of her jaw. "But I intend to treat you like the most cloistered pureblood Britain has ever seen so if you want more than a few stolen kisses, ice cream, and spell lessons you'll have to wait."

"I want everything," she said. "I want your whole goddamned world at my feet." She leaned forward so her lips were at his ear. "I want your blood purist fanatics to know they're less than me. I want the people who'd steal my mind to protect me weeping on their knees at my feet." She took a deep breath and added, almost as if she expected him to argue, "I want you. You're the only person in this whole mess I trust."

Draco hid his satisfaction and just brushed his nose across hers. "It's definitely time for you to meet my mother," he said.

* * *

 **interlude**

You watch the blond boy walk away from the park with a new swagger in his step. High status indeed. _Hogwarts: A History_ tried to gloss over the importance aristocratic families play in the wizarding world, and it had taken you three hours to figure out a way to magically index the tome, but once you had you'd noted how many Malfoys seemed to occupy high positions.

Of course, even if you hadn't done that work, the way he was treated in Diagon Alley would have let you know. Draco Malfoy is, as your more tasteless peers would have said, a catch.

You wonder if he's actually good at kissing. You don't have any comparison but you decide it doesn't matter. He's smart. He's pleasant to look at. He's an in to a world you want and he's more than willing to sponsor - meaning marry - you. You even like him. You think his plan to treat you as a veritable princess is, politically, a good one. You suspect he didn't come up with it on his own and so you look forward to meeting this mother.

* * *

 **then**

Narcissa Malfoy lay back on their bed, thighs sticky and a satiated smiled on her face as Lucius propped himself on an elbow and looked at his wife. With the ease of long partnership he continued a conversation their passion had interrupted and asked, "A Muggle-born, Ciss? Really? If the Greengrass girl is that abhorrent to the boy I'm sure we can find someone else. Maybe a little French thing?"

"Trust me," Narcissa said.

"With my life," Lucius said. "It's simply that sponsoring a Muggle-born is quite the statement. Are you absolutely sure?"

"An angry, beautiful girl, kept from her rightful heritage, blaming Dumbledore?" Narcissa said softly. "She's a story. She's a legend. She's romance and vengeance and a pretty face rolled into one, nearly perfect, package. Get a Mark on her arm, or perhaps even not, and she'll be a force, a force we control A force _Draco_ controls."

"Forgive me if I find myself doubting this girl, however pretty she is, and however much she's ensnared our son with her exoticism, can stand up to the Order. As much as I hate to concede the fact, the truth is the Aurors and their ilk are not incompetent."

"She taught herself controllable, wandless magic," Narcissa said. This was, in the end, what had led her to agree to Draco's request that she tutor the girl. Not in Potions, though the children would certainly make use of the lab she'd had added in a room adjacent to the kitchen, but in fitting in; in _passing_. Narcissa had been impressed the girl was clever enough to know magical power would not be enough. She studies people, Draco had told her. She sits in that ice cream parlour and watches everything and every time we go into Diagon Alley she refines the body language a bit more. I didn't even realize some of the things she did were jarring until she began turning them off as if with a flick of a wand when we passed into our world, he'd said. That – that wisdom mixed with that level of cool calculation and dissembling – had made something flutter inside what passed for Narcissa Malfoy's heart. The Malfoys, to her mind, were royalty, the Blacks even more exalted. And who, really, were the Gaunts? Impoverished, inbred monsters who talked to snakes.

If their world could embrace _that_ , how quickly would they take to this girl? How many people could this girl wrap around her finger? Narcissa was willing to bet all of them.

Lucius took a moment to process that this girl of Draco's could do wandless magic before he let out a low whistle. "No one's done that since – "

"Exactly," Narcissa said. She reached a hand over to rest on her husband's chest. "Let's keep sight of the true goal, love, and not allow ourselves to be bogged down by ideology."

"So she'll be working in the house Potions lab?" Lucius asked, conceding to his wife's desire to take this mystery girl under her wing.

"I'm sure I'll take her out for tea once or twice," Narcissa said. "She's been seen on Draco's arm multiple times, after all. If I don't sip some fluid or other with her in public people will start to talk."

"You know best," Lucius said.

* * *

 **now**

Narcissa Malfoy smiled in satisfaction as the Muggle-born girl she shaped and taught and married to her son killed the other king on the chess board. No Riddle, no Dumbledore, and the Death Eaters, easily impressed followers that they were, firmly in the hand of her daughter-in-law. She wondered how long it would take to place Draco in the position of Minister. She wondered if the boy would ever realize the queens were the most powerful pieces on the board.

"What now?" asked one of the interchangeable Weasleys.

Hermione glanced at Narcissa before she broke the man's wand and tossed the pieces to the floor. "What you had planned for me," she said. "A life without magic. It'll keep you safer from what we plan to do."

Narcissa couldn't help herself; she laughed at that and the sound rang through the room with its vast ceiling and silent, shocked losers.

* * *

 **interlude**

You like Draco's mother, this dainty Narcissa with her pale hair and her delicate features and her cultivated smile. You like her even though it's clear than under her apparent delight at meeting you, under her guided tour of a home so big you're surprised it doesn't have Public Days every spring, and under her polite inquiry into how you take your tea, it's clear that she sees you as a tool that's been fitted to her tiny hand.

Draco, of course, adores her.

Still, even knowing she means to use you, you can't help but like her obvious competence, her appreciation for your usefulness, her determination to make you even more useful. You'd be nice even if you didn't plan to use her in turn to ferret out every last nuance of how to move in her world, how to exude wealth and privilege without seeming to try. How to win.

You remember the hearty ginger who eyed you your first day in Diagon Alley and you plan to make sure he feels like an uncouth rube in your presence. Then you plan to evict him from his world and let him live with only what pathetic magic he can summon from his coarse fingertips.

"When we introduce you to… certain people… Narcissa says, I think it's important that we make sure to allude to your heritage without making it –

\- uncomfortable for them, you say, and smile. Like a princess in homespun.

Who still has perfect hair and no dirt under her nails, Narcissa says. Exactly.

The two of you smile at one another in unexpected, perfect accord while Draco stands at your side and asks, in genuine confusion, what's homespun?

 **~ finis ~**

 **. . . . . . . . . .**

 ** _A/N - This story was spawned as a result of a prompt on tumblr. I wrote the bulk of it in a burst in September of 2015 then sat on it until Ibuzoo inspired me with her own then/now structure to shape it using that format. I highly recommend all her work._**


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